Social Media manners – 25 Dos and Don’ts on social media

It can be difficult for business owners to understand common social media manners. The social media world is evolving day by day. Thus it can be difficult for business owners to stay updated with all the social media manners and the latest social media updates. If you are among the ones who occasionally log in to their social media accounts, you might face difficulty in understanding it.

You can win over this confusion of understanding these social media manners and proper etiquettes if you maintain a balance between personal and professional conversation skills and manners. To help you with this, we have created an ultimate guide to social media manners and social norms so that you can ace Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as a communication tool with your audience. And make the best use of them for your business. With practice, you can understand these simple social media tips that you can use daily. Every good marketing agency uses social media in their SEO activities to improve the website visibility on search engines.

Top 25 Dos and Don’ts on Social Media

Do: Update your social media profiles

The first impression is the last impression and long-lasting as well. Social media setups a digital impression of your business. Half completed social media accounts are considered to be unprofessional. Spare some time to fill out all the necessary details of your business o all your social media accounts.

Do: Create separate personal and professional accounts

When you are focusing on building your brand on social media, always have separate personal and professional accounts. When you post separate content on both profiles, your clients know which account to follow for what needs. You can also easily avoid friends and family members that have the habit of spamming you on social media. 

Do: Share strategically

Your posts are a representation of you and your brand or business. You should be confident of what you are posting on your account. But at the same time, you should also be very cautious of what image are you forming with the content you post. For help, you can have a look at the infographic below from HootSuite. 

Do: Do Regular posting

Or we can simply discuss how often do you need to engage with your audience on social media. All this depends on your business and niche. But you should post at least once or twice a week. This way you can present fresh content frequently in front of your customers.

Do: Identify your priority networks

You might feel tempted to feel each and every social media network available online. But it can be dangerous for your brand image. Start with the best social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and more. Posting good content and media on these social networks will be worth your time and efforts.

Do: Audience Interaction

When using social media, interacting with your audience and followers is important. 

• If you find a comment or question on Twitter that you can answer, do not hesitate to do so.
• You can ask your Facebook audience and followers for any recommendations.
• If you have a very nice industry-based blog on your blog site, you can share it on social platforms.

These are some great social media manners with which you can develop great connections on social media.

Don’t: Sound too needy

Do not sound like you are begging your audience to like comment or share your post. As good social media manners, you can share about your business on your personal account so that they know what they can expect from you. Without sounding too needy, you can still be strategic by creating some great share-worthy content.

Don’t: Spam

Retweeting, liking, commenting, posting, and sharing is good on social media, but not to the extent that it looks like spamming. Nobody will like to get too many notifications from 1 single account. For instance, do not post the same promotional message on 20 LinkedIn groups and then never interact with the group members. It does not leave a good impression on the online audience.

Do: Gain trust

If ever a condition occurs where you get negative comments and criticism on social media, do not just shut your account and hide from the people instead of responding to comments. Be calm and respond in a positive manner. Try to resolve the issue and let people know about it. Not being able to accept social media criticism is not good social media manners.

Don’t: Complaint

It is an important part of social media manners. It is quite obvious for businesses to see ups and downs. But it is not right to complain about customer engagements or not getting expected revenue. If you talk negatively about others on your social media account, your potential clients might think twice before doing business with you.

Do: Be helpful

Making money is important for every business owner but that should not be the only motive. Keep in mind the 80/20 rules of social media. 80% of your total content must be informative and engaging while 20% of it should be about your business, goods, and services.

Do: Right content according to the network

Every social media website has its own purpose and type of followers. You need to understand this and then create your content accordingly. For example, Facebook posts encourage natural user engagement, LinkedIn is more industry-specific where professionals can interact, Twitter helps in a quick conversation among businesses and users.

Do: Check Grammar and spelling

Grammar errors and spelling errors can reduce your credibility. You can avoid such mistakes by writing your post content first on an editor or document with spell check. There are many online grammar checking software and tools such as Grammarly where you can check the grammar of your content. 

Do: Use visual media

Images and videos help to boost your social media strategy. According to an article by HubSpot, tweets which have images have more chances of getting retweets, more than 89% of users favorite these tweets and get 18% more clicks. If you belong to an industry that has the importance of visuals then you must use social media platforms such as Instagram.

Don’t: Use all capital letters

Sentences on all caps look weird in your status update. They give the impression that you are angry or upset. Not using all caps is one of the important social media manners. 

Do: Mention other businesses in the location tag

Social media means sharing. Whenever you are posting an image on Instagram or Facebook, do mention the location of where that picture is taken. It tells people where were you and also tells them how they can reach there. It is a great initiative to support other businesses.

Don’t: Overuse Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to connect all your posts to a related topic. Hashtags let you categorize and search content on social media websites. This does not mean you make the whole sentence a hashtag. Use them properly and hashtags can help you improve your online visibility and followers. Excessive use of hashtags will look spammy and become ineffective.

Don’t: Repeat content

Think from the perspective of your followers. You would not like to see the same content again and again from different pages and people. It is very irritating. If you want to reuse your old content for any reason, make it more creative. As good social media manners, you can use new images instead of posting the same old image.

Don’t: Use auto DMs

With constant use, you will understand the social network tips, tricks, and tools. Twitter has an option of the direct message (DM). Do not send direct messages to your new followers. You can send messages when you need direct interaction. You can use automated social media marketing and particular places but not direct messages.

Do: Share without expecting

Your consistency and patience will eventually pay off. Once you start investing your time and efforts, you will see results with time. Nothing happens at once. Just like when you started your business, your results may be slow at first. Then as you’ll make connections, you will build a reputation, and develop a strategy.

Do: Give credits where necessary

This is especially important and good for Instagram and Twitter. Follow the right social media etiquette by giving the deserved credits to the writer of the quote or photographer of the picture you post. Take the efforts to find the Twitter user for the original post and add it in your tweet. You can also write thank you tweets for people who mention you in their tweets.

Don’t: Automate Blindly

If you are using the same content on all social media platforms do it with proper online etiquette. Change the voice of the text according to the network. Many platforms have the option of posting on multiple channels at once but try to stay away from it. 

Do: Tag wisely

Tagging is a great way to tell about your business to others. But think wisely about it. Tagging others in photos is a great way to introduce your business to their friends, but before you do, think through it. Are you tagging everyone you can think of because you’re hoping some of them will follow you or promote your business? Or are you tagging businesses and people to create a dialogue or to highlight something you admire about them? Unexpected tagging can be a fun way to surprise and delight someone or could cost you friends, fans or followers.